Diners at the Monday night networking dinner before the Security TWENTY conference and exhibition at Harrogate raised £2050 for charity. Pictured left to right at the Majestic Hotel in the Yorkshire spa town are Alyson Gallagher of iComply, who nominated the night’s good cause, Sands stillbirth and neonatal death charity; and Roy Cooper, MD of ST organisers Professional Security magazine, and the dinner’s compere.
As ever the cash came from a raffle, with prizes donated by exhibitors, sponsors and well-wishers; and cash from diners to play the ‘heads and tails game’. Damian Marsh of Anixter – the distribution company, one of the sponsors of ST17 – returned as Roy’s coin-tosser; except that gone was the actual physical coin. Instead, Damian used a smartphone app. The game was the same, though; diners had to stand and guess whether the coin would fall (or land on the screen of Damian’s phone) heads or tails. If they’d put their hands on their head and it fell heads, they were still in the game. If they guessed tails by placing their hands on their backsides, they weren’t. As ever, it didn’t take long for the room to be whittled down to the fortunate few who were invited to the front, for the final couple of rounds; and the winner was Max Lapalu, of one of the next day’s 91 exhibitors, the French access control product company STid.
Among the bumper crop of exhibitors, Tavcom Training on their stand were explaining the CTSP (Certified Technical Security Professional) professional qualification for fire and security installation engineers. It’s due to launch in September, and you can pre-register. While the rooms at the Majestic were high, they weren’t high enough for Revader‘s CCTV tower to deploy, so it was on show at the hotel entrance.
At the conference, chaired by Mike Gillespie, speakers included Ed Bateman, the former Met Police man now the Deputy Director of Partnerships and Interventions at the UK regulator, the Security Industry Authority (SIA); Simon Banks, director of the National Security Inspectorate (NSI); and Nick Fisher, the new CEO of the crime reporting software company Facewatch, who described the move to serve the retail sector. To reflect the Yorkshireness of the event, other speakers were Michelle Bailey from the Barnsley-based guarding company Active Response, and detective Dave Porter of the regional (Yorkshire and Humberside) cyber crime unit; and last but not least Malcolm Dawson, the former North Yorkshire policeman now head of security at the University of Leeds, who stressed the campus security team’s work on pastoral care of the tens of thousands of students.
Afterwards Roy Cooper thanked all the sponsors: Anixter, Hanwha Techwin, Hikvision, IFSEC (dinner sponsors), Seagate, CSL and Jacksons Fencing. For more on the exhibitors and the rest of the event, visit https://professionalsecurity.co.uk/security-events-and-conferences/security-twenty-home/north/ and see the August 2017 print issue of Professional Security magazine.
The next ST event is at another new venue for the series, Glasgow; at the downtown Hilton Hotel on Tuesday, September 5. As with all ST events, it’s free to attend the conference and exhibition, whether you are installer, security manager, consultant or specifier, whatever your sector or interest in private security. You do not have to register beforehand, but organisers ask that you do, online, just so as to help with catering for numbers – because there’s free bacon butties for early arrivers, and tea and coffee and biscuits at the mid-morning conference break, and a hot buffet lunch.
As in past years, 2017 will end with an ST event in London; at the Park Inn Hotel, Heathrow, on Thursday, November 2. For details visit https://professionalsecurity.co.uk/security-events-and-conferences/.
